Interesting weekend

Saturday (9/8)

Went to a gathering of the Japanese contingent of the Philly chapter of SGI (Tomomi's religious group) at the home of a couple who've been living in NE Philly for 25 years but are returning to Japan to enjoy their retirement.

Met some nice people, including the Shirai family who live about 10 minutes away in Ambler. Mr. Shirai (Heigoro) is a postdoc MD at Penn. We had a nice talk, and I think that Tomomi and Mrs. Shirai (Sayuri) will probably get together a bit from here on. Their son Seiichi is 7, and is really struggling with English in his US elementary school. I felt pretty bad for him.

We also saw our friends from Reading, the Mizumotos. Noah was especially excited to see Erika (almost 5), with whom he played at her birthday party last year. They come down to Philly often for SGI related stuff, so we'll probably be seeing quite a bit of them.

Noah and Minami both played like crazy with all of the other kids, and were totally exhausted when the day was done. It was good to see them both having such a good time playing with other Japanese kids—it's been a long time for Noah and it was a first for Minami. It's great motivation for Noah to speak more Japanese, too.

Sunday (9/9)

Took the whole family down to Penn at Tomomi's suggestion. Mostly just walked around and just enjoyed a quiet afternoon on campus. The kids really enjoyed running around inside and out. They especially liked climbing on the button sculpture in front of the library.

We stopped in the Penn Bookstore so I could buy some textbooks only to find out that they were at the Penn Book Center—go figure! Anyway, Tomomi met a very nice Japanese couple and their daughter. They live in Ardmore and he works at HUP as an intern (or was it resident? and what the hell is the difference, anyway?) We got their number, too, so Tomomi's made quite a lot of Japanese acquaintances in just one weekend.